There is a beam of light in everyone’s life, which penetrates the darkness, dispels the haze and points to the light. Ma Lanzhen, the headmaster of Zhejiang Yongkang Yantou Primary School, is a beam of light shining into life for 300 minority students.
Ma Lanzhen, who has been rooted in rural education since teaching for 32 years, was awarded the Outstanding Contribution Award for Rural Teachers in Zhejiang Province. In 2010, he served as the headmaster of Yantou Primary School, and then embarked on the path of exploring national unity education for 12 years… For 12 consecutive years, Ma Lanzhen has steadily promoted national unity education, making the school a multi-ethnic family that cares for children’s growth and progress, lighting up a heart lamp with sincerity and passion, and illuminating the children’s future. The great love of national unity is expressed with heart, the positive energy of national unity is displayed, and the songs of national unity are composed with selfless dedication and simplicity. The ethnic flowers that used to be “harmonious but incoherent” are now embracing each other like pomegranate seeds, writing a different story of national unity.
1、 Light up the light of hope, accompany minority students to and from school by bus for 12 years
Yongkang, located in the middle of Zhejiang Province, has 545000 foreign constructors, including more than 129000 ethnic minorities, and more than 40000 migrant children have borrowed from the local school. Yantou Primary School is a typical imported ethnic minority school. The students come from 16 provinces and 25 ethnic minority areas. How can these children from different regions, different learning foundations and different cultural backgrounds identify, accept and blend with each other? Ma Lanzhen has always been thinking about it.
In 2010, Ma Lanzhen arrived at the school and took up her post. She found that most of the children lacked a sense of security and belonging due to different customs and language barriers, and each child had a different learning foundation. In order to let students adapt to the new environment as soon as possible, Ma Lanzhen did not spare no effort. At 5:40 in the morning, Ma Lanzhen got up just before dawn. In the past 12 years, she has kept this time, just to catch the bus and take the earliest No. 10 bus to school. In this way, she can walk to school with the children and fully understand their demands on the way.
Peng Xiao is a Tujia boy from Xiushan Tujia and Miao Autonomous County, Chongqing. After returning to school after the epidemic ended in 2020, his parents entrusted him to live in his uncle’s house temporarily because they were busy with logistics business. He can only contact his parents by telephone and WeChat every day. He was originally outgoing and sunny, but suddenly became introverted.
Ma Lanzhen took the initiative to invite him to take the bus to school with him. On the way, he had a friendly exchange and learned that Peng Xiao missed his parents very much, and was very anxious about not keeping up with his online English learning.
Ma Lanzhen contacted Peng Xiao’s parents and hoped that they would not neglect their care for their children when they were busy with their work. At the same time, Ma Lanzhen also communicated with the subject teachers in a timely manner, hoping that the teachers would make a good connection between online teaching and offline teaching, and provide individual guidance to the students in need. After a series of help measures, one day, Peng Xiao happily told the teacher, “I have met my parents. Thank you, teacher.” With the encouragement of the school teachers, parents also paid more attention to their children, and he quickly returned to his former sunny and cheerful appearance.
For 12 years, President Ma has taken the bus to and from school with students every day, made many students’ friends, opened the closed and sensitive hearts of children with heart to heart, and shone a ray of hope for children.
2、 Light up the warm light and insist on serving ethnic minority families for 12 years
Family school integration is the deep integration concept advocated by Yantou Primary School. Ma Lanzhen believes that it is not easy for ethnic minority families to leave their homes and come to Yongkang, the capital of hardware, to work and earn a living. They should pay more attention to them, give them more warmth and give them more help. For 12 years, Ma Lanzhen and the Red Pomegranate Party members of Yantou Primary School have been pairing up with ethnic minority families every year. On holidays, they send warmth to their relatives, such as Tujia Huang Wei, Miao Hu Ping, Tujia Peng Xiao.
For Ma Lanzhen, the 12 years of staying in Yantou Primary School, like quicksand between fingers, went fast, but there were moments that were unforgettable. The most impressive moment was the moment when Huang Wei, a Tujia student from Guizhou, shouted “Mom”. Before that, she did not expect that Huang Wei’s parents had waited for ten years with a “mother”. Huang Wei’s parents did not receive her from her hometown until her child was seven years old. Huang Wei is very upset by the strange environment and family relationship, and has been silent. Ma Lanzhen, who knows the importance of family environment, invited Huang Wei’s parents to participate in the parent-child interaction in the parent workshop and encouraged Huang Wei to participate in various stage performances. Huang Wei, who was gradually confident and cheerful, finally said “Mom” for the first time when she was ten years old, which moved Ma Lanzhen.
“They are sensitive and strong, and they will be more brilliant if you give them a little sunshine.” In Ma Lanzhen’s opinion, to let children grow up happily and with dignity, it is more necessary to form a joint force mechanism of social care. Under the guidance of the United Front Work Departments at all levels (the Ethnic Affairs Bureau), the “Social Service Practice Base of Zhejiang Revolutionary Education Group” and “Jinhua Ronghe” Ethnic Minorities Studio and other service platforms were successively launched in Yantou Primary School. As the director of the studio, Ma Lanzhen took the lead in carrying out targeted services. At the end of April 2020, when 29 students returned to school from the middle and high risk areas of the epidemic in Hubei Province, Ma Lanzhen carried out psychological counseling for students and parents, followed up and made up lessons, promptly solved their problems, paired with families of ethnic minority students in difficulty, and went deep into their families to send warmth.
Hu Ping comes from the ancient city of Phoenix in western Hunan Province. When she first came to school, she and her mother could not speak Mandarin and could only communicate by gestures. Her family situation was very special. Her parents were divorced, and her mother brought her children to Yongkang to work alone. The children’s living conditions were very bad, and their mental health was also poor. Ma Lanzhen invited them to the school at the first time to learn about the situation and send them consolation articles, stationery and big red envelopes. During the holiday, Hu Ping’s family was visited. The distance was more than a thousand miles. When she found that her grandmother was a descendant of the intangible cultural heritage of Miao Drum, the school introduced Miao Drum into the community and hired Hu Ping’s mother and daughter to teach. Gradually, Hu Ping became confident and cheerful, and her academic performance improved steadily.
3、 Light up the light of dreams, and continue to promote ethnic integration education for 12 years
56 nationalities, 56 flowers. Different regions, different learning bases, different national cultural backgrounds… With so many different children gathered together, how to let them identify with, accept and blend with each other is a deeper problem Ma Lanzhen pondered. In 2010, after much thought, Ma Lanzhen decided to try out “integrated education”, hoping to promote “national integration, home school integration, teacher-student integration, and student student integration”.
In order to create an atmosphere of national unity and family unity, Ma Lanzhen carefully designed “one wall, one hall, one corridor, one window and one operation”: around the playground, he drew a national culture wall of more than 300 meters long to display 56 national customs and characteristics; A cultural corridor of “ethnic cuisine on the tip of the tongue”, a row of ethnic culture publicity windows, a national culture hall, and a national unity hall are arranged in the restaurant, and the classical dances of six ethnic groups, including Tibetan and Bai, are integrated into “ethnic calisthenics”. “The children were very happy after the traditional broadcast gymnastics was replaced by national gymnastics.” Ma Lanzhen said, “The music with national characteristics is their most cordial voice, which can really relax them.”
In actual teaching, Ma Lanzhen led the teachers to take art education as a breakthrough to provide a platform for minority students to show their talents. He has successively established five national art troupes, namely, “Colorful Ethnic Chorus”, “National Dance Troupe”, “Hulusi National Instrument Troupe”, “Bawu National Instrument Troupe”, and “Miao Yingfu Drum Troupe”, so that the versatile ethnic flowers can win many good achievements in the talent competition in the city.
Ma Lanzhen, based on the characteristics and advantages of multi-ethnic culture, has set up such expanding courses as “The Sound of National Musical Instruments Ba Wu”, “The Rhythm of National Musical Instruments Hulusi”, “The Hmong Embrace the Blessing Drum”, “How Much Do You Know about National Culture”, “The Great Fusion of National Culture”, and held “National Culture Week”, “National Culture Festival” and other activities to let students understand the clothing culture, dialect culture, food culture, and festival culture of China’s ethnic minorities, Cultivate students of all ethnic groups’ sense of national belonging, pride and national unity.
The transformation happened quietly. In 2010, most of the out of town students who graduated from Yantou Primary School could only go back to their hometown. Now, almost all of them have stayed in Yongkang to continue their studies. From unwilling to come and reluctant to leave, ethnic minority flowers are gradually blooming in other places.
Li Bijun, a Miao student in Chongqing, grew up on the stage of cultural festivals again and again. In 2017, he was rated as “the most beautiful student in Jinhua City”. In 2015, Li Bijun won the national gold medal for the group singing in the National Children’s Singing Competition of “Flying Childhood”. In 2016, Li Bijun won the “Sun Youth National Children’s Song Singing Competition”, and won two gold medals in the national finals for solo singing and group singing. Now she has successfully entered the First Middle School. It is gratifying to note that there are also 8 graduates in her class who have entered No. 1 Middle School at the same time. In Weixiao, there are many such touching stories.
4、 Light up the light of harmony and realize national unity and family unity in 12 years
When we entered Yantou Primary School, we heard pleasant songs – “Yanxiao is my home, and Yanxiao is also your home. The ethnic unity is a family, and the harmonious campus is a family…” This song, “Ethnic Unity is a family”, was specially invited by Ma Lanzhen to customize the “school song” for the campus.
In 12 years, Ma Lanzhen led Yantou Primary School to transform from a humble rural primary school into a “demonstration school for national unity and progress”!
Ms. Tian Yanqin, the student’s parent, said that when she talked about it, she was very touched. She said that her daughter enjoyed a better education in Yongkang than in her hometown of Guizhou. She not only learned knowledge, but also became confident and brave. She is usually busy with her work and does not care enough about her daughter. Fortunately, Ma Lanzhen, the headmaster and teacher of Yantou Primary School, enlighten her daughter enthusiastically and patiently, so that she can understand the hardships of her mother’s work. Gradually, the daughter understood her mother’s good intentions, and the mother daughter relationship became more harmonious. Now, Ms. Tian has sent her three daughters to Yantou Primary School. She said that all ethnic groups in this school love each other, which makes her warm and reassuring
Now, Yantou Primary School has become a golden card of Yongkang’s national unity work. Now, Ma Lanzhen’s greatest wish is to have more people pay attention to the special group of children of foreign builders, and look forward to the flower of national unity blooming in more schools!